Color filters have been employed not only in CCD or liquid crystal displays but also in preparation of a color slide in combination with a silver halide light sensitive photographic material (hereinafter, also simply referred to as a light sensitive material, or photographic material). These color filters, in which cells are regularly arranged, meet the requirements of a color filter used for a CCD or liquid crystal display. However, they have problems such that preparation thereof includes many complex processes and requirements, resulting in high costs.
The use of the color filter in combination with a photographic material has been known in the art, such as a photographic material used for preparing a color slide available from Polaroid Corp. (Instant Slide). In this sort of use, the color filter having the same area as the photographic material is needed and its cost of production is strongly demanded to be as low as possible. However, a color filter at a low cost is not available and its development has been strongly desired.
With the recent rapid spread of personal computers and popularization of the internet, there have been increased opportunities of inputting image information on personal computers to process it for utilization. To input the image information into the personal computer, there is available a method of taking pictures with a digital camera or a method of inputting the image information of conventional color photographic material with a scanner. The former has problems that the number of using picture elements is small, leading to a narrow latitude and insufficient contrast. The latter needs to subject the color photographic material to photographic processing at a photo shop and requires complex color processing, having problems such that it takes time to obtain the image information. There has been desired a color photographic material which is processable in a more simplified manner and can be read by a scanner, but no color photographic material meeting such demands has been known.
A method of obtaining color images by combining a color filter with a monochromatic photographic material (Instant Slide) was proposed by Polaroid Corp. The color filter used, in which picture elements are regularly arranged, has the problems that the cost is high and interference fringes are sometimes produced.
When used in combination with a silver halide photographic material, preferably employed as a support of the color filter is triacetyl cellulose, polyethylene terephthalate or polyethylene naphthalate. However, there has not been known a color filter having such a support and also meeting the above requirements.
Recently, public concern about environment protection has increased, and reduction of hazardous waste material and effective utilization of limited resources is desired. In the photographic material is used silver halide as an image recording medium, employing precious silver resources. Silver is a limited noble metal resources and effective utilization thereof has been desired. Silver is one of the heavy metals and its effluent standard is so severe that the complete recovery of silver is desired from the viewpoint of environment. In addition, the common silver resources recovering method conducted at the present time is that photographic waste liquor or its concentrated solution is transported to a recovery plant for the recovery od silver. There are several shortcomings in terms of energy saving and cost reduction such as: energy is required for concentrating the photographic waste liquor, expensive equioments are necessary for concentration, and the transportation of the photographic waste liquor is inefficient due to transporting it together with non-valuable water having a weight of several hundred times that of contained silver. Further, the energy load to completely recover silver dissolved in the solution is also large. In view of the foregoing, a method is demanded to readily recover silver resources contained in the photographic material without allowing the silver to be leached out of the photographic material.
A complex-forming compound such as EDTA or PDTA used in photographic processing is not easily decomposed by bacteria, increasing the load on the effluent treatment, where the stoping of the use thereof is desired.
Thus, a photographic material, an image forming method and a processing method of the photographic material by which high quality images can be easily obtained at a low cost and which is friendly to the environment, and a resources recovering method were desired, but the prior art could not satisfy all of these requirements.
Providing a color filter increases the thickness of the photographic material. An increase of the thickness of the photographic material generally increases light scattering, disadvantageously leading to deterioration of image quality such as sharpness. Accordingly, a method without producing deterioration of the image quality is desired. It is common knowledge to one skilled in the art that a conventional photographic material has a silver halide emulsion layer on the support and is exposed to light from the emulsion side.